文案与商业写作2018cjr.org
商业作者们，请别再拿市值和 GDP 作比较
Business writers, please stop comparing market value to GDP
导读
这篇评论文章批评商业写作者把公司市值与GDP直接对比，指出这类类比容易混淆存量与流量、估值与年产出，给读者造成误导。对写作者来说，它提醒我们：用数字和类比解释复杂概念时，必须交代比较的性质和边界，不能为了直观而牺牲准确。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
做数字类比时先确认两个量是否同类，避免把存量与流量、估值与年产出混为一谈。
- 02
用大数字制造直观感受时，要选读者熟悉的参照物，并说明它只是量级参照，不是严格等价。
- 03
引用GDP这类概括性指标时，要保留限定条件，警惕精确数字带来的虚假精确感。
- 04
类比可以帮助理解，但写作者应主动说明类比的局限，防止读者把修辞当成事实。
HN 评论精选
存量与流量的类比很常见，关键在于读者能理解量级，而不是要求严格等价。
这是胡说。存量与流量的比较随处可见，没人会困惑。你听过“别买超过你年薪3倍的房子”吗？没人会反对说拿固定成本与积累速率比较不合逻辑。这个比较很直接：如果一个GDP万亿美元的国家能把所有有用努力投入造一家公司，他们一年就能造出一家苹果。这算疯狂混为一谈吗？没人认为国家真能产出公司。它只是描述两个东西大致数量级的方式——公司估值和国家年产出。
RyanCavanaugh查看英文原文
This is nonsense. Stock vs flow comparisons occur all the time and no one is confused. How often have you heard things like "Don't buy a house costing more than 3x your salary" ? No one objects and says it's illogical to compare a fixed cost to a rate of accumulation. The comparison is straightforward: If a country with a trillion-dollar GDP could put all its useful effort into constructing a company, they'd produce a company like Apple once a year. Is that some kind of insane conflation? No one thinks it's actually possible for a country to produce a company as an output. It's just a way to describe the approximate order of magnitude of two things - the valuation of a company, and the yearly output of a nation.
概括性指标会制造虚假精确感，写作者应交代其局限，而不是把数字当成完整现实。
GDP本身常被过度用来简化复杂系统。最初提出GDP概念的西蒙·库兹涅茨在1934年提交给美国国会的报告中警告：人脑把复杂情况压缩成简洁描述很有价值，但若不受明确标准约束就很危险；定量测量尤其会误导性地暗示被测对象具有精确和简单性。国民收入测量容易受这种幻觉和滥用影响，尤其当它涉及对立社会群体的冲突时。经济福利也不能被充分测量，除非知道个人收入分配；收入测量也不估计收入的背面，即赚取收入所付出的强度和不适。
nsajko查看英文原文
The GDP itself is overused in an attempt to oversimplify complex systems. Simon Kuznets, who originally formulated GDP in 1937, stated in his first report to the US Congress in 1934, in a section titled "Uses and Abuses of National Income Measurements": The valuable capacity of the human mind to simplify a complex situation in a compact characterization becomes dangerous when not controlled in terms of definitely stated criteria. With quantitative measurements especially, the definiteness of the result suggests, often misleadingly, a precision and simplicity in the outlines of the object measured. Measurements of national income are subject to this type of illusion and resulting abuse, especially since they deal with matters that are the center of conflict of opposing social groups where the effectiveness of an argument is often contingent upon oversimplification. [...] All these qualifications upon estimates of national income as an index of productivity are just as important when income measurements are interpreted from the point of view of economic welfare. But in the latter case additional difficulties will be suggested to anyone who wants to penetrate below the surface of total figures and market values. Economic welfare cannot be adequately measured unless the personal distribution of income is known. And no income measurement undertakes to estimate the reverse side of income, that is, the intensity and unpleasantness of effort going into the earning of income. The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above. This is quoted from Wikipedia, so you might as well read the rest of the section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product#Limitations_and_criticisms And here's a historical overview: https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/03/gdp-a-brief-history/
用读者熟悉的参照物解释大数字有价值，但不能把错误等价关系当成准确解释。
这个比较是错的，但我认为它有助于把万亿美元放进语境。多数人能理解一千美元、一百万美元、十亿美元，但万亿通常不在我们的日常对话里。比较应该写成：“苹果市值一万亿美元。这有多大？相当于X、Y、Z……”
docdeek查看英文原文
The comparison is wrong but I think it has utility in putting that trillion dollar amount into context. Most people can understand a thousand dollars (context: not life changing money but a welcome surprise), a million dollars (imagine the house I could buy…), a billion dollars (the government wastes that in X minutes!) but a trillion dollars? That’s not normally part of our conversation. The comparison should be “Apple has a market cap of a trillion dollars. How big is that? Well it’s the same as X, Y, and Z…"
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